carebear3895

1 hour ago, mrjohns2 said:

I always saw it as a personal investment of time into camp. 

One of the missions of the Order was to promote camping, and more specifically in council camping. I was always happy to sign up for a service weekend because in my mind, that was MY camp. 

On 11/19/2022 at 6:20 PM, Armymutt said:

 The lodge doesn't emphasize ceremonies.  Instead, it's all about parties during the large gatherings.  

That is the culture NOA has pushed from the Top down.  I know a few years ago (won't give the exact year as it will dox) there was a push by the National Chief and National Vice Chief to eliminate the labor portion of the Ordeal and remove service from Fellowships/conclaves. You can probably guess how that conversation went...

OA is more of a frat house under the guise of "leadership development" than it is a true service organization these days. 

16 hours ago, PACAN said:

Gotta believe these mergers will be more shortly.   There are close to 15% of all councils with less than 1000 youth.

Talking with some old buddies still in the field, it's the same story that it has been for the last decade. The big metros with high income suburbs are recruiting very well while the smaller, rural councils are suffering. 

22 minutes ago, David CO said:

Are we talking about $$$ here?  I'm sure it will be real nice to start out-earning the neighborhood kid who mows lawns in the summer.

To be fair, his union negotiated a great CBA. 

1 hour ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Welcome back to the light.

 

feels like I'm staring at force ghosts of Baden-Powell, Seton, and Beard

27 minutes ago, SSScout said:

Well, there is a way for to avoid "missing working with them"...  Jes' sayin' . . . .  hint hint . . . 

Absolutely! I actually can't wait to get back into the green and tans (or green and gray if that's still going to be a thing).

But I think it's only fair, especially to my replacement, if I take a good chunk of time away from scouting. 

3 minutes ago, David CO said:

Nope.  Our local unit still has a good reputation in the community.  BSA's reputation is dirt. 

Great for your local unit. 

1 minute ago, David CO said:

I don't think scouting is tainted.  BSA is tainted.

 

The two are synonymous in the mind of your average American 

None of the recommendations mean anything when the registration fee keep going up. 

I stated a dominant minority pack once that traditional way (i.e. not a Scoutreach unit). Highlight of my career. From start to finish, it took almost a full calendar yaer.

They were unable to reacherter because they couldn't pay the fees. 

20 hours ago, Mrjeff said:

I admire all of our paid Scouters.  Our SE is involved and engaged with our Scouts and enjoys spending time with them.  Our DEs are exceptional and work tirelessly to assist our units to be successful.  Thay are worth every penny they're paid.  When I retired I was asked to take on the responsibilities of a DE and I declined the offer as I am well aware of the work they do and the sacrifices they make.  If they were paid by the hour they would all be wealthy.   Scouting needs those professionals and I am thankful for them.

❤️ 

12 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

That makes more sense. It seems that up until 1972 the commissioner color was blue instead of red.

Historically, Commissioners had a blue insignia and Professionals had red. 

Now we both wear a red patch, but if you look closely at the current commissioner patch, it still has a blue fleur de lis

16 hours ago, David CO said:

Charging scouts a $50 council fee has zero value to those scouts whose units don't attend council events.  For the boys in my unit, there would have been no return on that fee.  It's just another tax.

 

Quick question, does your PLC decide that? or You? 

37 minutes ago, Sentinel947 said:

This is just part of the JD (job description) for a DE. I don't think @Cburkhardt was suggesting it become the standard for Scouting volunteers.

The DE role has some huge challenges. From a job design perspective, it's asking people to have a variety of valuable skillsets for a low rate of pay. That's a poor business practice. The BSA will always struggle to attract people with the right background for such a multifacted role, and once it starts to develop staff to have the necessary sales, fundraising and people management skills needed to be a DE, they can leave the BSA for sales, fundraising or HR jobs that are more lucrative than being a DE. 

Many American companies are starting to eliminate degree requirements where it makes sense. Certainly if ASM was a job, I'd see little reason to require a degree for it. 

Degree and a pulse, with the latter being negotiable. 

1 hour ago, PACAN said:

When you go to print out the Charter Partner Agreement in Internet Recharter the new form comes up. 

 

I guess it is imminent 

I REALLY WISH THEY WOULD TELL US THESE THINGS

First anybody in my office has seen this. 

I have just learned another 54 employees have been terminated from the National Office. 

On 11/25/2020 at 4:06 PM, walk in the woods said:

He was the SE for my council and tried to do the same thing here.  

TFC? I always heard his Pro staff there met their numbers, but quickly burned a lot of bridges with volunteers. 

7 hours ago, HICO_Eagle said:

That right there should have disqualified her from any position of responsibility if National wasn't so disconnected from reality.  I know some excellent PhDs but no one I've met with a PhD in "education" has seemed to know a dang thing about teaching.  Field experience should be the first and foremost thing they look for at National.  When you look at who gets selected for the Board or President positions in the past 15 or 20 years, it's almost like the organization wanted to destroy itself.

RECENT Field Experience, if I may ad. Someone who hasn't been around a Cub Pack in 5 years doesn't ad much to the conversation.  

But @Eagle94-A1 is correct. The National Director of Program has no field experience. She was hired directly to National a couple years ago by Surbaugh to head STEM Scouts, then moved up to Director of Program when Mosby took over. 

42 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

That will be an interesting thing to watch.  I can see your point - simply making larger, less manageable councils won't necessarily solve anything.

Yet, I look around the map and see lots of small councils with probably just a couple thousand Scouts.  I suspect that in some of the less well managed councils one of the primary issues is the lack of operational knowledge.  Lots of inefficient, mismanaged teams - council boards that don't know how to build council & district teams to accomplish their goals.  I believe the core theory is that by merging an underperforming council with a high performing council that things will improve.  The fallacy of that of course is that the governance model in Scouting makes that exceptionally hard to achieve.

 

Day 1, DE's are told to prevent units from merging at all cost. All it does is weaken scouting. Two units merge....all you end up with is one week unit. Instead, put all your resources into helping that weak unit get back on it's feet. 

Kinda makes you wonder why they (National) always go straight to merging when dealing with a weak council then. 

10 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

Where this has the potential to help is that it will lead to weak councils being merged together. 

I don't agree with this line of thought. All bigger councils create is bigger problems and more overheard cost. (See Michigan Crossroads) 

Yea...because DE's just choose not to recruit minorities...That's why we have that issue /s

Nobody wins with quotas. 

16 hours ago, RememberSchiff said:

Churchill Plan

I like how that presentation deflects all blame off National and puts it on the Local Councils. It kinda assumes Councils are below these "quotas", for lack of a better term, because the field staff simply aren't trying hard enough. 

Want to make scouting more accessible to low income families…..maybe stop raising the membership fee and get rid of that horrendous new member tax. 

12 minutes ago, David CO said:

I didn't want to go into any detail about pro-life rallies, since it not a scouting activity.

Thank you. I appreciate the clarification. 

Apologies about my earlier judgement. 

2 hours ago, David CO said:

There is a lot of anti-Catholic bigotry in scouting.  Always has been.  We would rather camp at our church-owned facility rather than put up that nonsense.  After all, the kids join scouting to have fun.

We expect to be yelled at, cursed at, and physically threatened at highly politicized events like pro-life rallies.  The kids are ready for it.  They have been trained to handle it.  They will anticipate the crowds calling them all sorts of ugly names (like bigot and hater).  They understand that this is the price for adhering to their faith.

We Catholic leaders understand that we cannot insulate our children from all of the ugliness in the world.  They need to know about it, because they are certain to encounter it.  But we don't think they need to encounter it at scouting activities.

 

I have never seen discrimination towards Catholic Scouts in person, but I'm not going to be ignorant and say it doesn't happen either. It really sucks your Scouts experienced that and I'm sorry that is happening. 

That said....WHAT THE &#(@ ARE YOU DOING TAKING SCOUTS TO A PRO-LIFE RALLEY. My God man, use some common sense. 

Politics of the event aside, those always have the potential to get out of control. Don't put kids in that position. 

I'll await my downvote.